The idea for the seemingly inconsequential digital thumbs-up icon we know as the Like button emerged around 1995 and had unexpectedly momentous consequences. Today, we click the Like button more times per day than there are people on the planet. The button facilitates human interactions, feeds us information, and helps us build connections online. But what accounts for its meteoric rise? And why did its success surprise even its creators? To answer these questions and more, we set about writing Like: The Button That Changed the World.
It’s hard to say who invented the Like button, since many people in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s were working simultaneously on a related set of challenges—such as how to rank content or encourage restaurant reviews—in an environment where informal sharing and learning across companies was common. One surprising discovery in our interviews with the pioneers of the Like button, such as James Hong, a co-founder of Hot or Not, an attractiveness-rating site, and Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter, was that none of them foresaw its eventual consequences—or even regarded it at the time as more than a quick fix to one of the countless tactical-design problems they faced daily. That in itself was startling: something so world-changing, born out of a moment of routine problem-solving.
